Rescue
by Tom Tomorrow
Summary: "Supergirl..." The blonde's hero moniker barely scrapes out of Maggie's throat. "S-Supergirl… You can let her go." Kara doesn't answer.


"Supergirl..."

The blonde's hero moniker barely scrapes out of Maggie's throat.

"S-Supergirl… You can let her go."

Kara doesn't answer.

Bent double, not quite sitting and not quite crouching on trembling knees, the crimson, pebbled glass from the skyroof glinting off the hero's curtain of no longer golden hair, darkened from the rain, the sweat, and the muted red, obscuring her face in licks and tangles.

And the bitter tang of blood sits heavy at the back of the detective's throat.

It is everywhere.

Dribbling patterns on the blonde's boots.

Staining otherwise white-knuckled trembling hands dark.

Her super suit is saturated with it.

It trickles down with the rain water, turning from darkened velvet to soupy pink, splotching the pristine floor of the DEO with the viscous, sour circles.

A moment passes. Then another. And another.

And oh God… it is a lot of blood.

But Maggie can't even focus on that, tears pricking behind her eyelids, because tucked into the divet of Kara's arms, held so impossibly close, obscured mostly by the cape that had been torn off of the blonde's back roughly and haphazardly is… Alex.

Only the tip of her right ear, her pale brow, and her soaked, lifeless hair is visible.

But Maggie knows it's her.

Knows that Kara made good on her promise to get her back in the sickening thirty six hours she'd been gone.

But each heartbeat reverberates like a thunderclap in her chest, and still she can't breathe, can't dig that desperate of air out of her lungs, the breath that tells her it's going to be okay.

Because she can hear Kara.

Can hear the shuddering gasping breaths that quiver throughout her shaking form.

Can hear her whisper something over and over and over into the cape.

Can hear her crying.

But she doesn't hear Alex.

Alex hasn't made a single sound.

"Supergirl..."

J'onn says evenly, taking over, impossibly steady.

His combat boots crunch under the shards of glass, hands held up in front of him as inches closer, like he's approaching a wild animal.

Later, the detective will have to thank him for it, because her feet are cement and her heart is quicksand and she can't… can't stop staring.

The agents at the entrance of DEO are stuck in the same standstill, suspended in silence, various faces that Maggie barely knows aghast with shock or pity or fear, hands on their holsters, no one knowing what to do. And though she had flinched for her gun when the hero had crash landed through the skyroof, she hadn't pulled it out, and now she has the urge to yell at them.

To tell them to put their weapons away.

Because Kara isn't dangerous.

She's scared.

"Help her!"

Kara howls, an agonized vulnerability that Maggie has never heard from her, jerking backwards as J'onn approaches, pulling her sister closer to her chest.

Behind her, Maggie registers the medical team approaching, hears the wheels of a stretcher moving then stopping when the older martian motions them to keep their distance.

"We can help her," he rumbles quietly, "But you have to let go..."

If anything, the blonde holds her closer, the grip white-knuckling further, the drip- drip of crimson rain water pattering faster against tile, rocking forward and back, forward and back now, without ceasing.

Maggie doesn't know if the repetitive motion is intentional or involuntary, an effort to keep comfort Alex or comfort herself, or merely a helpless physical response to unimaginable trauma.

"I… I… you're gonna g-gonna be…. Okay…"

The blonde warbles, low and desperate, into her arms, falling back into the mumbled mantra.

And please… Alex…. please ... say something.

But there is nothing.

Nothing.

Until Maggie can't swim against the rising tide of dread in her throat and finds the feeling in her deadened legs to force herself forward. One step, then two, then ten, until she's next to J'onn who's only a hand length away.

"- fine… S-s'kay.. You're okay…"

Kara is muttering and closer up, as the detective lowers to her knees, feeling the sharp sting of glass as it presses into her jeans, she can't not see how her shoulders are shaking, how her hands tremble, how the blonde is quaking.

Can't ignore the nauseating stench of gore.

"There's a stretcher behind us. Doctor Emerson is waiting. You've done well, let us do the rest."

J'onn instructs in a calm, measured breath.

"G-give her to J'onn." Maggie whispers after him, finding her voice impossible to make steady. "Please, Kara."

Kara jerks, startling at the mention of her real name, ripping her out of the trance because then cloudy, bloodshot cobalt is staring at the detective or rather through her, making the blonde seem fragile and young and absurdly human.

"Please."

Maggie whispers pleadingly, hovering her hand out, but doing everything in her power not to touch them, recognizing a splatter of red across the left side of Kara's unusually pale features, absorbing the fact that Alex still hasn't moved.

A broken whimper of a sound leaves Kara, eyes dragging from Maggie to Alex to J'onn, then her throat spasms and in a quick, stuttering movement her arms drop and jerk out.

J'onn doesn't hesitate, sweeping Alex into his arms, and when the cape readjusts, her wife's arm falls with the gravity of the movement, down to her side, and it doesn't move, just swings there.

Maggie lurches after him as he takes long strides toward the stretcher, feeling horrible as she leaves the blonde crumbling into herself on the ground, but she needs to know… needs to make sure that Alex is alive.

And when J'onn lays her flat, straightening her out because even in whatever this is, Alex had managed to curl in herself, Maggie registers details, horrific clues to the ordeal as a tapestry on her wife's broken form.

Her knuckles are lacerated, palms torn, dried blood staining the tips of her chipped nails.

Multi-colored contusions twist up her arms, flanking the edges of her neck, disappearing under clothes that aren't hers, muted red seeping from somewhere underneath.

One ankle twisted in such an abnormal position, that it has to be broken and there's a gash above her left temple that struggles to clot over, a dried crimson mess that scars a lesion down to the edge of her brow, spreading a purplish bruise across to the crook of her jaw.

Angry reddened rope burns on her wrist.

She looks beaten.

Like someone had beaten her.

And she'd tried to fight back, but lost that battle too.

And Maggie knows that's exactly what it sounded when they'd gotten that first taunting phone call.

But her eyes sting and her throat closes as she stumbles to a stop and stares waiting… waiting… waiting…

And finally it comes, the slow, shuddering inhalation of breath, one that had come way to far and in between for comfort, but it's there.

Alex is breathing, which means she's alive.

The detective reaches out with a shaking hand, brushing Alex's sweat-matted hair away from her forehead and then began to comb her fingers through the tangles there in deliberate, measured strokes, using the other the grab at her hand, to stop it from dangling, to stop it from just hanging there.

The grip isn't returned and Alex is so, so cold and it is everything Maggie can do to not cry right there in front of all these people.

"Maggie..."

J'onn whispers, the command unspoken, and it is in another significant effort in in itself to make herself let go, and let the medical team sweep in to do its job.

Maggie's whole world spins as she continues to ignore the garbled movements around her, choosing to watch staff hook her up to machines, begin to cut those clothes away, then swarm her completely, until she's blocked from her vision when they begin to move her away.

And she probably would have followed her, stayed there forever to the end of the line, if not for the grotesque squelch of skin against wet tile.

The detective jerks stiffly back to where Kara is struggling to stand on wobbly knees and it's her who makes a sharp, pained noise, somewhere between a gasp and a whine.

"Oh God..."

Maggie whispers.

Registering for the first time that all that blood, it can't possibly have all been Alex's.

"The blood…"

Without the cape, without Alex blocking her, there is only more red.

"It's n'mine. It's n-not."

Kara slurs through gritted teeth, palms finding purchase on the ground as she tries to stand up again.

"M'fine."

Through muted pain and panting groans, it sounds as if the blonde genuinely believes what she's saying, even when Maggie's own eyes and ears tell an entirely different story. Because even if it is the truth, the blonde shouldn't be struggling this hard to stand, she shouldn't be slipping on that blood.

"To hell you are."

Maggie mutters and J'onn already approaching, but the blonde isn't having any of it.

"I'm fine!"

Kara roars, the vehmance behind it trickling out like a wheeze, any credibility the statement could have had dissipating when the tail end of her words dissolves into a gag of a cough. A cough that shudders its way up her shoulders and trembles down her limbs and there is viscous red bubbling out the corners of her mouth when she finishes.

"Help… h-help Alex! She's the one… the one that needs help."

Still desperate and high and young, and Maggie realizes then that aside from the red, there are no other colors. Most importantly… no green. Not on her. Not staining her veins. Not in her eyes.

And that meant no kryptonite.

"She's getting help, but you're bleeding. You need it too."

J'onn explains in the same steady timbre and how can he not be panicked as he hovers close waiting for an acknowledgment that doesn't come. Instead, Kara only moves, trying to stand again.

"I… I- but Alex..."

The blonde whispers hoarsely, groaning into another fit of coughs, and the crimson is coming up thick and dark now, dribbling down her chin, splattering down against the tile.

"Hey… hey… They're taking care of her..."

Maggie says softly, seeing how Kara can't or won't calm down, knows that helping the blonde is a thing that won't happen until the hero lets them, and the detective herself is itching to see where Alex is headed, wants to be next to the oldest Danvers just as bad.

"We can see her in a minute..."

The blonde's eyes wander across the room, past familiar faces, wobbly and unsteady, trying to pinpoint who said it, and clearly whatever adrenaline that Kara had been working with is on its way out.

"Maggie and I are going to help you sit up."

It's not an offering, but a firm command, and in long strides she's next to Kara, following J'onn's movements to help, maneuvering a hand until it rests itself under the blonde's shoulder, the other pressing itself lightly against her back, struggling to ignore the sticky, hot blood on her palms that comes with doing so.

Until Kara is sitting instead of kneeling, and for a moment, Maggie thinks she's going to protest again, but she doesn't.

Instead her face goes grayer than it had before and her eyes roll back in her head.

And for the second time that night, J'onn carries another Danver's sister in his arms.

.. … ...

"Hey."

The detective opens her eyes, blinks a few times to clear the fluorescent whiteness that floods her vision, before finally… finally focusing on the shape in front of her.

Lucy.

The taller brunette is still in her blackened, sleek special ops uniform, her service weapon is still at her side, her combat helmet in the other. She must just gotten back.

"Hey."

Maggie croaks back in a whisper, forcing the dryness down with a painful swallow.

Lucy mouth upturns slightly, her eyes crinkling with a sad smile that doesn't quite meet her eyes, as she slides down the wall to sit next to her in the quiet hallway.

"Is there a reason you're in the hallway, instead of in there?"

The older woman asks quietly.

Maggie swallows again, furrowing her brow and tries to think of an excuse, of anything that the younger Lane might take for an answer, but in her fading adrenaline and whirling thoughts, she can't come up with one that sounds even halfway reasonable. So instead, she leans away from her knees, averts her burning eyes back to the floor, and just shrugs, because she can't trust herself not to cry.

She can't cry.

Not now.

But her silence has already given Lucy some kind of answer.

"I don't know…. I don't know if the med team came to talk to you yet, but I talked with J'onn… When Alex gets past these next few hours… he said she's going to be in the clear."

Lucy whispers, resting a warm hand on her shoulder, soothing the tense muscle there.

When. Not if.

And Maggie is grateful for the tiny little descriptor.

"The next few hours…"

She echoes hoarsely, and the trail end of it warbles quietly into the air as she remembers a redhead in a lab coat spouting something she couldn't bring herself to listen too.

Her eyes burn with salt, blurring the checkered tile until it all fuses together.

"Yeah… someone told me."

Lucy nods and Maggie watches the agent's other hand to fiddle with her combat helmet out of the corner of her vision.

"Kara… is in the clear too." the other woman continues. "They're going to move her to the sun lamps."

Maggie nods. Once. Twice. Three times.

Blinking the tears away furiously.

Because she knew that if something happened to the other sister, the other one would undoubtedly fall apart.

"What… What happened there?"

She asks quietly.

"Nth metal." Lucy mutters without further explanation . "And Supergirl doesn't know how to wait for backup."

It's almost a snipe, but has none of the mirth to carry its tone.

And it's always been as simple as that really. All protocol and common sense often flew out the window when those they were close too were even in the barest implication of danger.

"We both would have done the same."

Maggie whispers and Lucy's grip on her shoulder tightens.

"Come on." the other woman says, shifting to her feet, giving Maggie little choice but to be pulled up with her. "Let's wash the blood off your hands."

The detective paused, gazing at her hands.

Alex's blood.

Kara's blood.

Crusted and dried on her palms, her wrists, her fingernails.

There had been so much of it…

Seeping on through her hands, dribbling on the floor, decorating scars and bruises.

Nausea wells up in her as fast as the guilt hollows her out.

Because she could of done more. She should have-

"No. None of that."

Lucy instructs gently, pulling her close, into a hug, Maggie can't bring herself to pull away from.

"They're good, Mags. They're the Danvers sisters. They always come with a warning."


End file.
